


Nightmares

by noifsandsorbees



Series: Scars [2]
Category: The X-Files
Genre: Breakup, F/M, Reconciliation, revival
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-17
Updated: 2015-10-17
Packaged: 2018-04-26 18:29:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,172
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5015476
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/noifsandsorbees/pseuds/noifsandsorbees
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s been more than a year since she left and only a few hours since she started to understand that come home also means talk to me and yell at me and put me in my place until we work this out and it’s us against the world again, the way it’s supposed to be.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nightmares

_There’s metal in her hands, heavy and cold and powerful. She’s standing in her living room, eyes locked on him and no force on Earth can hold her back. Then she’s on her bathroom floor, crawling, crawling, crawling. Her finger twitches and she pulls the trigger and tastes blood in her mouth; it’s black when she spits it out. Again and again she shoots at a body that won’t tear and his lips rise at the corners into a devilish smile._

Scully wakes in a sweat, her head too heavy to pick up, her mouth metallic and dry. She’s breathing hard, so hard, and the room is too dark to see. She pushes herself over, nearly crashing into the body on the other end of the bed.

“Mulder,” Scully tries to plead, voice catching in her throat as she shakes him awake. Her heart is beating too fast. “Mulder. Wake up.”

Graham jerks up, turning on a lamp.

“Dana, wh-what's wrong?”

Scully focuses now, not completely able to steady her eyes but she can see enough to make out his face, absolute terror staring back at her. She can only imagine how she looks to him and pushes the thought aside, getting up from the bed and throwing on the first set of her clothes she can scavenge from the floor.

He bounds after her, a hand on her shoulder, an awkward attempt to catch her in a hug, but she’s dodging him, moving too fast and too lost somewhere between her head and the need to be anywhere but here.

“Dana. Stop for a second. Talk to me.”

“I need to go home.”

“It was only a dream,” he pleads. “Come back to bed.”

“I need to go home,” Scully repeats, and there’s no room for debate or question in her staccato words.

Graham nods, resigned. “A least let me drive you. It’s 12:30, the Metro is closed.”

“I’ll grab an Uber,” she absently replies, picking up her bag and tapping away on her phone. She’s out the door without so much as a glance goodbye and he’s staring at her walking down the hall, phone to her ear, shaking slightly in her heels.

“It’s me,” he hears her say _(to her mother? a friend?)_. “Can you come over?”

He realizes this will never change; she’ll never turn to him when she needs someone, and he’s almost ready to give up trying.

***

She loves that Mulder doesn’t ask obvious questions. He doesn’t bother with “are you okay?” He just promises to be there as fast as he can. She can hear his car start before the line goes dead.

She wants to be home, truly home. She doesn’t want to wait two hours for Mulder to hold her in an apartment specifically designed to keep him out. _Why did she ever leave_ , she thinks as she gets in the back of her ride.

Scully spends the next hour and a half pacing back and forth across her apartment, unable to settle. She pulls off her jeans and changes into one of Mulder’s old Knicks T-shirts and considers starting a load of laundry, but only gets as far as pulling together a small pile. She reads two sentences of a medical journal article, cleans half her kitchen sink, starts a bath and turns it off after a few seconds, twice.

***

The nightmares haven’t always been there. They started a few weeks after she and Mulder went on the run, as if her brain had finally decided it was time to process all the trauma she’d survived. Scully would wake up in tears, with fresh images of William being taken or Mulder trapped six feet under replaying in her head. Once she dreamed of nothing other than a mass of billowing smoke surrounding her as she slept, and she could almost feel Spender above her as she woke, just as she imagined he was that revolting night in Pennsylvania. After waking, she spent half an hour trying to cough the smoke up from her lungs and scratch away the ghost of his fingers unwanted on her skin.

They came almost every night for months and Mulder would stay awake with her until they felt the world start spinning on the right axis again.

The nightmares calmed when they bought their house, the concept of home comforting her subconscious. Her last one had been months before, but then she had to go open the door to her past life.

***

Mulder lets himself into her apartment as she starts her third bath and within seconds she’s buried in his chest. He clasps onto her, trying to break the laws of physics to bring her closer and closer.

Scully reaches over to turn off the faucet and he kisses her forehead, her temples, the bridge of her nose. She looks up and kisses his mouth desperately, her left hand clasping the back of his shirt, her right palm searing into his cheek.

He walks her backwards towards the bedroom, his mouth never leaving hers and her hands pushing his jacket off his shoulders, grasping underneath his shirt. She falls back on the mattress and he climbs on top of her, running his mouth along her collarbone, up her neck, along her jaw, and then he’s kissing her again and again.

“Mulder, please,” Scully all but begs, and his hands race to push down his jeans and briefs. He kicks them sloppily to the side, pulls off her panties and lines himself up against her. He looks up into her eyes and sees the need, something beyond lust or fear, and with one slow thrust he’s inside her.

He fucks her slow and hard, her nails leaving long scratches on his back as she focuses on never letting him go. When they come, only moments apart, she’s seconds from breaking. Mulder gathers her back against his chest and she wrenches away to strip them of their remaining clothing, needing to feel all of him now, before the sobs start flowing.

***

“What was it tonight?” He asks once her breathing has calmed.

“Pfaster.”

He tenses for a minute, having all but forgotten the name.

“You haven’t had that one before, right?”

She shakes her head. "There were a couple right after it happened, both times, but nothing like this.”

“Did something happen that made you think of him?”

She shrugs. “I ended up telling some FBI stories yesterday. I thought of him, but didn’t bring him up. I had honestly forgotten how much it affected me, but then that dream was like it was happening all over again, like I was back in my apartment with him, and, fuck…” She’s shaking against him and she looks so young, like the near-child who first walked into his office, only then she was all easy smiles and hope.

Mulder reaches behind himself to untuck the bedding and pulls it around their bodies. She can sense his immediate discomfort.

“Do I want to think about where you were sleeping?” He asks, defeated but not accusatory, threading his fingers through her hair. She swears she can hear his heart break just a little bit more. Scully shakes her head silently.

“Come home Scully,” he whispers desperately against her. She pulls herself tight against him and nods with a conviction she hadn’t been aware she held. He looks down at her until she’s forced to look him in the eye. “Yeah?”

Her tongue darts out to wet her lips, giving herself a moment to pull her thoughts together. She realizes the pit of nausea that seems to haunt her stomach lately has dissipated. “Yeah.”

He cups her face and kisses her again, lazily letting their tongues play against each other for a few minutes. When they pull apart, she keeps her forehead pressed against his, sharing his breath in the dark of the bedroom.

“I love you,” she whispers, because she needs to say it, needs him to know it without a doubt. 

“Come home,” he says again and she kisses him until he understands her answer.

***

 _It took exactly two days and three hours from the time the FBI officially cleared Mulder for him to book his first cross-country plane ticket; two tickets. He held the printed confirmations in front of her face at breakfast, so full of glee that it nearly broke her heart to say she couldn’t take off work, not even if he asked nicely and pouted_ just like that.  
_  
Dr. Scully had patients to see and former Special Agent Mulder had more than a decade’s worth of UFO sightings to follow up on, so he left and she stayed._

_Within that first month he made a weekend trip to Washington, a week-long journey to Nebraska, and several small trips to Iowa, New Mexico and North Dakota. An empty bed became Scully’s norm and, naively, she decided to let it go, let him get it out of his system without comment. After all, he’d been locked up in that house for so long._

_He returned from each trip with more passion and a deeper level of obsession than she’d ever seen before, so blinding that at times she preferred when he wasn’t there. It was easier to stop the encroaching feeling of isolation when he wasn’t in the next room._

_Mulder stopped trying to convince her to come with him after two months and by the third he became especially good at forgetting to find phone service or even bring his charger. After six months he stopped remembering to bring her tokens from the airport._

_Scully stopped listening to what the trips were about, because it all sounded the same and it all seemed fruitless. She thought it was ridiculous that after all they’d been through, after all the evil they’d seen, he’d still be chasing flying discs in the sky._ Maybe his abduction haunted him more than she’d ever guessed _, she thought one night, but they didn't talk about that anymore. They didn’t really talk about anything. He was so determined to make something more out of the world that they built that he was forgetting to live in it._

_One night when Mulder was gone, she woke in chills and sweats from a dream she couldn’t remember, the only remnant an all-consuming feeling of loneliness and isolation. She punched his pillow so hard that her hand ached for half the week._

_Scully started renting an apartment in Richmond, just to see if he’d notice. She justified it by saying it was closer to work, but always knew better. She left with only one suitcase and slowly brought more and more as the months passed and their house felt less like home. Clothes and books and movies and pots and pans and photographs, until all that that remained were the remnants of her perfume on his pillow. She hadn’t been home in two weeks when he called begging her to come back._

_She didn’t tell him when she moved back to DC, not at first, thinking maybe this time it would be goodbye for good._  
  
***

They awake not much later to a soft rapping at her door. Scully groans as she pushes herself up and away from a protesting Mulder hugging her close, and slips on a robe before answering.

“Hey,” Graham says, standing awkwardly in the hall, as if he knows he doesn’t belong inside. “I, uh, I brought breakfast and coffee. I just wanted to see how you were doing after last night.”

Scully smiles at him, genuine and sad. Some part of her is in love with his small gestures and semi-subtle ways of always trying despite every defense she throws up, even if it will never be enough.

She’s debating whether to let him in when Mulder pads into the living room in the T-shirt she was wearing last night and a pair of boxer briefs.

“Everything alright, Scully?” He asks, making his way to her side.

“What - what’s going on Dana?”

She’s about to open her mouth and say, well, anything, when Mulder beats her to the punch. “Fox Mulder,” he says, extending a hand and a fake smile. “You must be the new boyfriend.”

“Graham Moore,” he says, warily, but takes Mulder’s hand.

Realizing there’s not really an option anymore, Scully inclines her head toward the living room, inviting him in.

“Gimme a minute, I need to make a call,” she says to Graham. “Be good,” she warns Mulder before walking into the kitchen.

They stare awkwardly at each other for a minute before Graham places the breakfast on a table and starts walking around the unfamiliar room. He takes in the view of the Potomac a few blocks outside of her window, runs his fingers along the spines of several Jane Austen novels on her bookshelf and stops at a picture of Scully with a child in her arms. He can’t explain the chill that works through his body as he stares at it, her maternal warmth all but tangible.

Scully is staring at the boy as if he’s the greatest miracle in the world, with total love and devotion in her eyes. The boy is holding her short red hair between his chubby fingers. Graham thinks about her stretchmarks and infinitely sad eyes and realizes he’s found the answer.

“His name is William,” Mulder offers.

“He’s beautiful,” Graham pauses as he figures out how to word what he really wants to know. “How long ago was this taken?”

“Thirteen years,” Scully answers from behind him and Graham can hear a raw honesty in her voice that’s entirely new to him. “That was about two weeks before we had to give him up.” Mulder doesn’t miss the use of we, as if he had been there to help her make the hardest decision of her life. He quietly swallows his shame.

Graham’s about to question the pronoun use, when he eyes the other pictures on her shelves all starring the man next to him.

“The dream was about your son,” he states, turning back to her, rather than asks.

Scully shakes her head and Graham’s amazed to see how uncharacteristically poorly she’s holding herself together. “I wish,” she finally says. “I haven’t dreamed about him in a long time.”

“Were you ever going to tell me?” He’s not mad, she thinks. But he’s beyond his breaking point, worn down and exhausted.

She shakes her head again and he groans, turning away from her.

“You should go to work. You’re going to be late” Scully finally says.

“So are you,” Graham replies.

“I just called in sick. I only slept for an hour last night and I’m drained.”

Graham glares at Mulder immediately. “Can you give us a minute?”

“No,” she deadpans. “He stays.”

“Dana, this is ridiculous,” she can tell he’s finally snapping and she wants to find something good in this, hold onto the idea that at least he’ll be the one to break things off, but instead it’s like her heart is slowly being pulled from her body. In her oversensitive state, where each X-File feels like it was only this morning, the analogy comes with a moment of terror that she knows Mulder senses. His eyes catch hers, ask if she’s alright, or at least as alright as she was a minute ago. She nods shakily in response.

Graham doesn’t miss the exchange.

“Dana, what the hell is going on? I thought we were finally getting somewhere yesterday and then you storm out on me, twice might I add, and I find you in bed with some other guy. What can possibly be so bad that you can’t talk to me? Please, Dana,” he’s all but begging and her knees are buckling and _he doesn’t deserve any of this._

Mulder is watching quietly, uncomfortably, but holding his place because he knows she needs him there. Scully told him once long ago that in moments when she can’t pull herself together she is able to draw strength just from his presence in the room, and he can see she’s doing that now, no matter how mad she is at him.

“I can’t tell you,” Scully finally says, her voice steadier than she feels. She realizes that even if she could make him understand, she doesn’t want him to know. She wants to let him sleep at night and not think of impending alien colonization or super soldiers or monsters hiding in dark forests and corner offices. 

“Why the hell not?”

Mulder interjects before she gets a chance. “Scully, you don’t have to answer him.”

“Why the hell does he call you Scully, Dana? Like this is a high school football team.”

“Mulder, it’s okay. I owe him at least this.”

“You’re damn right you do,” Graham is beyond exasperated and she’s just exhausted. He’s searching for anything he can understand, grasping at straws, reaching for the obvious.

“You slept with him last night, didn’t you?”

“That’s none of your business,” she replies.

“What do you mean it’s none of my business? If you cheated on me I think I have the right to know.” He’s pacing, running his hands through his hair, and she knows he feels completely lost. “This isn’t the first time, is it?”

“It’s not that simple and I’m not going to talk about it.” She sounds so sure of herself because if there’s one thing she knows, it’s that she and Mulder operate outside of the rules of normalcy. What happens is no one’s business but their own, that only they understand this strange world they’ve created around themselves.

*** __

_Just like that, Mulder stops travelling. He calls everyday, the words “come home” repeated again and again, trying to become an all-encompassing I’m sorry, I love you, I’m an idiot, just please be here now. She knows that it would be a temporary fix, that if she comes home, he’ll stop his galavanting until he gets bored and the obsession will begin again. Slowly, with promises that it will be different this time, but inevitably in full force._

_It’s not that she doesn’t want him to go chase the truth, she just doesn’t want him to forget that he has already found some of it and made it into a home. There’s no in-between with Mulder and maybe she was only able to nudge her way into his life because she had the plane seat next to his, but she’s not willing to turn her lab coat in for a flashlight. Not again._

_It’s been more than a year since she left and only a few hours since she started to understand that come home also means talk to me and yell at me and put me in my place until we work this out and it’s us against the world again, the way it’s supposed to be._

***

Mulder knows that she dreams out of order, in moments and fragments that jump back and forth without a timeline but are somehow perfectly coherent. He knows that she can always taste and feel better than see, and he’s seen how they can leave her physically sick for days because there is no meaning behind their cruelty.

He knows that sometimes she swears she can read, make out letters on books and newspapers in the correct order and make sense of them. Monica told her once that this isn’t possible, that if she’s ever not sure if she’s awake, she should look for words; but that connection to reality always fails her. Mulder knows that this terrifies her more than anything, so she keeps trying to challenge it.

Scully can’t figure out how to feel now that she’s standing in her apartment like this with Graham, Mulder, and three broken hearts between them. When she finds a stray receipt on the coffee table, she closes her eyes and prays that when she opens them the letters won’t make sense. _A dream would be the perfect escape,_ she thinks, but as always, the words form perfectly and she’s without answers.

 _Except one_ , Scully suddenly realizes. Mulder understands how she thinks and dreams and feels while Graham finds it surprising that Mulder is in her bed, let alone her life, and that’s all she needs to know. She can’t believe she ever thought someone else could fill the Mulder-shaped hole in her heart, because no matter how much Mulder has damaged it, he’s also uniquely versed in bandaging it until she's whole again.

“I can’t explain to you,” Scully starts, wary but intent on being honest, “how dark what I’ve seen is. How cruel I know the world to be in ways you can’t even begin to imagine. In ways I never want you to have to know.”

She thinks she sounds ridiculous, like a purple-prose hero in a terrible movie, but she can tell he senses the weight of her words, even if he can’t understand them.

“But you can tell him?”

“I don’t have to,” she says and lets silence permeate the room, offering no further explanation. When it gets too heavy, she walks toward Graham who is still lost beyond measure.

“I never could have given you what you want, and I should have told you that sooner,” Scully says with a calming hand on his arm. “You’re going to be late for class.”

Scully places a loving kiss on his cheek and walks back to her room, leaving the room with an air of unfinished business that she’s sure will have to be dealt with later. But right now, she just needs to crawl into bed.

Mulder follows her once Graham, numb and hurt and confused, has left and sits awkwardly next to her at the end of the bed.

“So, that’s him?”

“Yeah,” she says simply, starting to stand up, walk away from him. Mulder grabs her hand to stop her and threads their fingers together.

“He seemed so...,” she can tell he’s trying to be polite and choose a word that won’t earn him a slap.

“Normal?” She offers, daring a glance at him. He nods. “He is. I mean, normal was what I was looking for,” she shrugs and looks anywhere but at Mulder. “I should have known better.”

“What do you mean?”

“I should have known I gave up the option of a traditional life more than 20 years ago. And that while it might be a nice fantasy, it’s just not me anymore,” she laughs, more at herself than anything.

It's quiet and awkward, a silence that doesn’t fit them.

“Do you hate me?” Scully eventually asks, her voice so very quiet, her posture defeated. He can see the weight of her dream still pulling at every fear and insecurity she’s ever held. He wraps his arm around her and pulls her close, kissing her temple, the top of her head, again and again.

“Never Scully.”

“Yeah?” She looks up at him shyly.

“Do you hate me?” It’s his turn to sound small. She realizes that this is all he has left to hold onto, that all the strength he has lent her today is gone and that he, too, is broken.

“No,” she sighs. “I could never hate you. I think you’re an ass, but that’s nothing new.”

“I deserve that.”

They’re silent for a little while longer. A tension hovers in the room that they still need to work through, but their ease is starting to seep through.

“Are you really coming home?” he pleads in a whisper.

“Soon,” she nods. “Things aren’t magically perfect now, we have a lot we need to figure it out, but soon.”

He sees her chin start to shake, just a little, and places a lingering kiss on her forehead before she can cry again.

“Let’s get a bit more sleep,” he whispers.

“Or at least lay down for a while,” she nods against him.

Scully inches her fingers under the hem of her stolen shirt and slowly pushes it up his chest, over his head. He leans forward and gently pulls at the knot of her robe, running his fingers across her skin as it's exposed. Their world is in slow motion and she can’t help but feel that this is the most intimate moment they’ve ever shared. Scully captures his hand in both of hers and pulls it to her, brushing her lips over his knuckles. She lets her eyes flutter closed as she lays the side of her cheek against the back of his hand.

“You know it’s only you, right? It’s always been only you,” she sighs.

Scully knows he’s weary, as exhausted as she is, but she opens her eyes and sees him staring back with pure clarity and understanding.

She looks for his shirt on the floor and closes her eyes again, saying a prayer that when she opens her eyes she’ll see the “Knicks” in clear, ordered, Latin letters. It’s always failed her before, but she’ll never stop trying. For once, she hopes she’s awake.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to the wonderful @tofutti-rice-dreamsicle for kicking my ass when I got lazy with this story and editing the hell out of it.


End file.
